Contributors

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

AIDS gives a warning about the UN and Copenhagen

This year, finally, UNAIDS admitted that the pandemic peaked in the mid-90s and there was no prospect of heterosexual pandemics outside southern Africa.

The UN-sponsored exaggeration of the AIDS threat has done real damage. AIDS now grabs a disproportionate amount of public money, consuming US23c of every aid dollar spent on global health, despite causing fewer than 6 per cent of deaths in developing countries. Obama has pledged 70 per cent for AIDS of all US global health spending next year: $US8.6bn ($9.5bn), totalling $US63bn over six years. Meanwhile, diseases that kill far more, such as diarrhoea, lack funding -- even though they cost only a few cents to treat.

UNAIDS generated constant scary headlines to keep AIDS at the top of the political agenda. It is therefore a massive conflict of interest that UNAIDS remains in charge of the science as well as being official campaigner-in-chief.

There are hints that similar conflicts of interest are corrupting climate science. Leaked emails from the influential Climatic Research Unit in Britain appear to show scientists manipulating data to prove climate change will be catastrophic.